


The Apocalypse meets a Civilizing Force

by maladictive



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen, shame pain and satin: the josephine story, very silk hiding steel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:30:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13339374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maladictive/pseuds/maladictive
Summary: It wasn’t supposed to be her. It shouldn't have been her. It should have been someone who could. She fell to the darkness, but not before wondering what on earth the Divine must have thought to see her standing in the doorway, bleeding and sobbing, incapable of helping or saving anyone.A story that details the grand time during which the Shining and Honorable Josephine Montilyet served as Inquisitor in the company of Varric Tethras and others less illustrious.





	1. Prologues

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't meant to be a step-by-step canon rewrite, and heaven help me it will not be. I have always wanted to write this idea out, and I already have quite a bit of it written out. If you know me elsewhere you know I think about the idea a lot.  
> Josephine as Inquisitor... be still my heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I choose to believe Josephine wasn't as rigorously trained ("scrapped" she says, not really fought, and she pushed a man down the stairs, of all things), and that is why her career as a bard ended so catastrophically and so traumatically. Again, this is from my interpretation of her backstory and what I know of bards from dragon age origins (leliana was one, right? but cut from a different cloth).  
> 

 

_A woman examined herself in the mirror and held in a small groan of hopelessness. The severity of her bun, the swellings under her eyes—these were to be expected, she had a great responsibility to see through after all. She let her eyes drift to the left, where a small painting (commissioned at an equally small price) depicted a handsome young man in a guard’s uniform. She smiled. Even now, 30 years later, her son’s open, beaming laugh eased every worry and brightened every line in her face. She curled up on her cot with the candle allotted to her that morning and continued her work. The day waited for no one._

 

_A man was still bruised from kicking the Templar, or rather, from what happened after he had kicked a Templar. It figured that they’d be as hard to take down as they were to look at. His toes hurt as well as his face. The image of the giant, leather clad man laughing at him and holding out his hands with a freezing charm wasn’t so bad, though. He could live with the humiliation of being designated the squadron spitfire. He wondered if he’d see them again tomorrow. His eye still hurt and his jaw was sore from the beating, but it was worth it if it meant he’d found his place in this stony, freezing fortress of hell._

 

_A young scribe went to bed beaming at the praise and pride of her mentor, a mentor who noticed a young woman of noble bearing with very beautiful, definitely impractical golden sleeves complimenting his student for her genius innovation; a thinner parchment laid atop the actual page that would allow an amount of ink to bleed through onto the parchment beneath, an instant copy made of every note taken._

 

_A woman with sleek hair slipping out of its bun and kind eyes notices a demon in the rafters of the kitchen while putting together a midnight meal for the dear madam Coordinator, her humble, makeshift ‘staff’ lies within arm’s reach, but she freezes. A hedgewitch can’t do much against a demon, not ever._

_She watches it, green and flimsy looking now, blinking in and out of existence, and she cannot move. This, she thinks, suddenly fully aware of the young maid peacefully asleep and unaware in front of the warm fire, is true fear._

* * *

 

“Tell Miss Ella to please actually _seal_ the documents going to Caer Trevelyan before signing them off. They could be altered by anyone on the way. I must discuss with her the _impact_ these minute procedures have on the overall safety and security of—“

The illustrious (we can assume she was, since many have extensively illustrated her in courts, bars, tea rooms, and the occasional seminar) Josephine Montilyet was half-eying an open letter from her sister and half delegating the task of warning the unfortunate Miss Ella of some polite but impending wrath to a scribe she employed. At that moment, Josephine was in her element. It would be another hour before she was left utterly alone with some finely worded and impressive Dalish letters of rejection and she looked forward to it very much. She _needed_ to find someone to teach her more elvish, she reminded herself, somehow learning it on her own never got her anywhere (nevermind that she taught herself 3 other tongues before braving whatever was left of the elvish language).

_Josie-dear, I have no idea why you let that Holy and Putrid Purple Devil-Woman talk you into things—_

Her mind was still on her sister’s letter, revisiting the complaints therein, but her eyes were elsewhere. When Yvette was warned two years ago never to mention Leliana explicitly in correspondence she took it upon herself to allude to her as colorfully as possible instead. Colorful never did necessarily mean clever, it must be noted.

Josephine rifled through a few of the perfectly organized shelves and drawers carved and worked directly into the wood of her desk and pulled out one correspondence or another, a little aimless now that she was left alone. She lingered a long time over a faintly insulting letter from the Valo-Kass, a Vashoth mercenary group that agreed to come serve as a private tactical team on the condition that she sent forward a signed and sealed _reference._ For _herself_. She complied, of course, but she was half enamored with the letter regardless. Who knew subtle disapproval and condescending agreement could be communicated so… briskly.

She was comfortable this way, her mind split comfortably between several topics and issues, a notebook open to jot down thoughts as they came. A noise drew her out of the pleasant blur of thought and work, however, and for some reason she let it.

It began as some light scratching outside her door. She assumed it was Miss Ella’s cat, which she pretended didn’t exist until it inevitably came to her office door to whine for food— the spoiled thing. The Mages weren’t allowed pets, she thought as she went to the door, even though she specifically called in that Circle from Val Royeaux to put to rest fears of… familiars aiding and abetting the mages at the Conclave.

She made her way to the door and unlocked it, muttering “the concept of a familiar is just not magically viable, I checked it myself, but no one here fully listens to anything— I should have stayed in V—“ blissfully occupied before she realized it was not a cat that she had heard.

A man lay prone on the floor. Or what might have been a man. He had long, spindly limbs and they were rotten with green blisters and grey ooze. He crawled, thrusting out one deformed hand and using it to grip the wood and drag his body forward. The scratches came from his body, sliding forward on the floor. There was something immaterial about him, something—

She slammed the door.

Josephine was prone to panic, but she was also prone to moments of almost cruel insight and violent action. The actions these moments gave birth to always either traumatized her or saved her life, and this time, like many times before, she accomplished both ends. She took the candle from her desk, barely pausing as she leapt over the chairs and the trunks of clothes and the scattered folders, moving quickly in spite of her long and heavy skirt. 

She threw the door open, candle in hand and wax hot and dripping onto her fingers and her wrist, and threw it where the creature’s head was slowly turning to look at her. For a moment, it blinked out of existence. In the next moment it was back, quickly catching fire and proving itself utterly real and physical. Screaming in pain.

Josephine did not notice the rivulets of peeling skin and blood on her hand, or the way the shine of suddenly pink, bleeding flesh caught the eye of several long-limbed, crawling things in the corridors as she ran. Her eyes were on the Divine’s door as it neared, and she yanked it open even as whatever it was in there, whatever thing she _must have_ heard, whatever thing that called her and made her act on blind instinct made her scream more. 

Whatever she saw, she would forget it later. But she had the firm physical memory, the  _sensation,_ of her injured hand at her open mouth, the taste of blood and terror, and _smoke._ There lingered a strange feeling, the immense weight of disappointing someone. Of failure.

The black cloud that overtook her was brief, for in the next moment something grabbed her. She would hardly remember this, but she would remember running and reaching out, things reaching for her in turn... She'd remember a woman. A woman...

She awoke in shackles, Leliana bent over in front of her with her eyes wide, and Josephine feared that she might be near tears. Cassandra was there too, her face pulled firmly into a scowl. And Josephine dimly remembered reaching out once again, the world erupting green around her, the strange cloud-like, mineral quality of terror and physical nightmares. Her throat, sore from screaming and layered in that other world’s strange dust, was the only thing left of the place. 

Around her people were burning.

 

 

Things were not, Josephine decided distantly, easy for anyone at the moment.

The man from the Chantry was valiantly trying, and extraordinarily failing, to remain the voice of reason. Leliana would not put her knives away, and crept slowly with shining, deadly things in plain sight whenever anyone referred to Josephine as ‘ _the prisoner_.’ Cassandra herself gave up the act long ago and gently shoved Leliana aside to ask _the Lady Montilyet_ who she saw at the conclave and how she came to be the sole survivor, and whether or not she could authenticate—

Josephine fainted a few times. As practically as possible, of course— she tried to hold it off for the end of important statements. At one point her vision blurred while Cassandra forced her to look at the glowing green horror of her injured hand and Leliana stepped in like a fury with a mission. But other than that, things went well.

Which was to say that she had not been executed on sight and she did not end the ordeal executed. She was, however, completely broken.

The place she thought she had made for herself, her role and her purpose, it was all ripped away. She felt suddenly ashamed of her shining jewels and bloodstained golden silk. She felt the shame of them like a burn as she explained to both the beautiful, dangerous woman and her very sharp sword that no, she could not use a weapon. Any weapon— No, definitely not an axe. Even if all one had to do was swing it at warm bodies.

Her convictions, her intense distaste for violence, even her intended purpose in the Inquisition itself—it all seemed… embroidered here. Pretty threads to unravel at the first sign of weakness. No one could cross one leg over the other here, look a noble in the eye, and tell him what his barbarism  _meant_. She felt ashamed of herself, of her body and her speech. She wished only to go back to the conclave and run to her now decimated office, to go back to where she could have done something useful, to rifle through every scorched letter, to find where she had missed something. To find out what she had done to allow this to happen. It had to have been her fault. An explosion that big, that devastating, it had to have gone through her—the threat, had there been a threat made, it must have passed her eyes. She was responsible—

She felt it more than ever as she rejected every weapon thrown to her out of a conscious awareness that each one would effectively turn to dust in her hands.

Cassandra made a noise of disgust and threw her a shield when she rejected even a light training sword.

“Avoid getting killed, at the very least," Cassandra seemed to scoff. 

Josephine, with a very heavy shield gripped in both hands, smiled pleasantly and bit back a cruel comment on Cassandra’s bourgeois ease with spilled blood, born of will and not necessity. For one so dedicated to _seeking_ truth, it seemed rather horrible to yell and hack it out of people. But then, she was a fool who had only turned her eyes to the world around her when her own destruction had forced her out of tea parties and squabbles between faceless titles and courts and contracts and etiquette and blackmail, when her own pathetic folly forced her to take those things and make them matter. She was lost again now. 

 

 

The bodies at the Conclave were unrecognizable, but as the Rift came into view, she knew. Josephine simply _knew_ that no one who died here would ever rest. She felt it pulsing inside her and felt the weight of it with every step.

She was useless, hiding behind the others and holding her shield in every direction she could manage. Cassandra passed her potion after potion, and though the elven apostate could only heal the others as fast as he could remain standing, she spared none for the rest of the party. Josephine's old lessons in defense and fencing seemed useless, no demon cared where she hit it, her dagger only caught on molten iron or went through a non-presence that felt like death. 

In a moment of inspiration, she caught the attention of an ice wraith and used her shield to maneuver herself out of the way so that its icy breath could reach a pride demon hacking away at a fallen soldier's body. Cassandra finished it from there, and Josephine could barely spare a moment for satisfaction before she was swept away, into the ruins where bodies burned all around her. 

They were unrecognizable, but Josephine walked in fear of recognizing one or another. This was the operation she ran, after all, she knew them. She knew...

She tried to discretely wipe the tears away as they came now, rummaging through blood and dirt to wipe them away, smearing more grime onto her face. She could not manage it without attracting the attention of the dwarf (whom she had read about in a letter from Leliana, and definitely heard about from certain friends with certain literary proclivities). Varric nudged her gently with his drawn and loaded crossbow, which should not have been comforting, but it was.

Josephine braced herself and slowly removed the soiled bandages that hid her burnt and glowing hand from sight, and with it uncovered, the Rift shrieked. Almost immediately a monster fell from the sky.

Everything that followed was hell.

It was only dedicated and determined evasive action that kept her alive. Her old disgust for death and violence was still strong, and every time she heard claws rake flesh she lost her sight for a moment. Her brain kept screaming things like “run away” and “quickly, that broken fang, use it as you would a dagger.” But she couldn’t exactly put it that way afterwards, when people fell over themselves just to hear her talk of the first battle and its victory. Lie number one, she told herself each time she left out her sudden pragmatic use of severed demonic limbs and distance. Her hand never moved from its place held high above her head.

They lifted her out of the rift’s shrinking domain in a cloth propped between two soldiers, a bite burning her arm and a fang still gripped in her fist. She couldn’t even feel it at first, it was the arm encased in green light, ebbing slowly and leaving in its wake the pain of the wounds. Leliana walked alongside her, holding her other hand firmly, silent. But Josephine knew what she was thinking.

_Everything’s changed._

It wasn’t supposed to be her. It shouldn't have been her. It should have been someone who could. She fell to the darkness, but not before wondering what on earth the Divine must have thought to see her standing in the doorway, bleeding and sobbing, incapable of helping or saving anyone.

* * *

 

Josephine awoke and lay in the bed for a long time. Nothing hurt too much to move, but still... the thought of facing the world outside weighed heavily on her mind. Her thoughts were interrupted by a small elfin girl, who fell over herself at the sight of Josephine's open eyes. 

"You, what's your name? There's no need to be frightened."

"I'm Uma, madam."

"Uma... Are you to take me somewhere?"

"I was told to take you to the Haven Chantry as soon as you wake," the girl squeaked. "But Cassandra told me not to let you go until you've been seen by the healer again. He's-- Madam, he's on his way! Please rest!"

Josephine ignored her and stepped over her prostrate form easily. Haven?  _Haven?_

She had some questions that needed answering. She marched to the Chantry and distantly noticed that she was being stared at and whispered about. For some reason this did not concern her.

The door to the hut was guarded heavily, but Josephine knew the guards wouldn't try too hard to stop her. She was, after all, a gentlewoman, gravely injured and scantily dressed (it appeared that way at least. She was rather distant from her body at the moment, and she found that she didn't care the way she knew she would have at any other time). Her eyes found the figures of Leliana and Cassandra immediately, and she felt rather irritated that they'd have a meeting about this without her. She was their _chief diplomat_ , she deserved to be part of the decision to move the operation to  _Haven._

“All you told me was that the Divine approved the initiative! Show me the plans and charters she approved! Take me back to the Conclave, I must see—”

“That woman! Guards! Arrest her!” An old man in chantry robes cried out.

“Disregard that. Take her back to bed. Honestly, she shouldn't have managed to get this far.” Cassandra sighed, firmly ignoring Chancellor Rodrick as Josephine promptly put too much pressure on her arm while struggling and went ashen-faced. Cassandra looked over at Leliana appraisingly, her face terrifying in the dim glow outside of the small hut that would be the quarters of the injured and obviously mad woman who Leliana now proudly called “the Dear Herald.”

“Her?”

And Leliana, for the first time in four days and five nights, smiled.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting that I should be posting what I write...

“There are two letters I moved to the front of your pile, m’lady, if that’s alright?” 

Josephine struggled fruitlessly with the heavily bandaged arm that would _not_ fit into her newly mended blouse. Her jeweled collar hung uselessly around her neck, colder than ever, and her head hurt. Her chest pounded from the beating it endured during the suddenly necessary combat training she was put through every evening now, in addition to (she suspected) something that felt a lot like a tantrum. She felt that perhaps being rude could be very forgivable under certain circumstances.

“Yes, thank you, dear,” Josephine said blandly, ignoring her irritation and instead focusing on how much initiative the young elven medic had grown into as her de-facto assistant. Such a long way from the cowering, prostrate child she had met upon awakening in Haven.

She gave up on the blouse. She’d work on it later. She sat at the desk and looked over the correspondence Uma had sorted for her, feeling somehow horrified that life went on after all. This was her routine now, as it was before, as if an entire portion of a mountain hadn't blown up with hundreds of people still inside it. She ran her originally intended diplomatic duties alongside her Inquisitorial duties as if nothing had changed. Her argument, the argument that won her these double-responsibilities, was that the role of the Inquisitor should be a diplomatic one, rather than one that resembled a militant leader’s role in an uprising. The memory of the explosion was strong in everyone's minds, and the memory of Josephine floundering bravely (but still floundering) before the breach's demon even stronger.

She only hesitated from taking on the roles of both titles when Leliana’s rage turned on her for the first time since Josephine told an assassin targeting her that she had some tea in the cabinet if he’d like to sit down and have a word with her about the wonders of double-agentry,

Nonetheless, Josephine was a force when she wanted to be, and the duties were transferred to her after only a few turns of hissing around the meeting table. 

Josephine put aside the copies of the requisition reports kindly sealed and hand-delivered by a few chosen scouts, distractedly put her comfortable and extremely frilly nightdress back on, and turned to the more urgent mail, feeling much more calm and a lot less like there were eyes in the walls, watching her dress and read and sleep.

A letter from the Chargers, which she'd expected from the moment she heard tell of a Qunari mercenary that _wasn’t_ Tal-Vashoth in the areas surrounding the Hinterlands, and a letter from her old correspondents— from the Valo-Kass.

The more the merrier, she told herself and set about replying and agreeing to meet with both parties. The Inquisitor would need the Chargers, but the acting Chief Diplomat to the Inquisition would need a lot more than an armed entourage.

She unclipped the jeweled collar, which looked comically out of place over the foolish nightdress, almost as an afterthought, and reached for a deeply blue and gold cape to wrap around her body. It was early enough in the morning that very few people would be out and about, and it was cold enough that the Inquisitor (capitalized) would be excused one posh and over-the-top article of warm clothing. Not that she could be said to have relinquished her usual style. After all, the last time Cassandra sent a scout’s uniform, the whole thing had looked so unusual on Josephine that not even Cassandra herself attempted to pursue the matter. Josephine’s usual wardrobe remained, but the skirts she was used to were disregarded and hidden away. There was no need for them here. 

It was why Josephine attended to the warmth of every refugee before anything else, before even acquiring horses for the Inquisition or setting up camps in the areas she had marked on the maps. She wouldn't have her... people... out in the cold while she stood around in embroidered gold. Haven's doors had been open to every wayfarer and traveller and shivering refugee, but their generosity wouldn't hold for long. 

And so, these sartorial details accounted for and larger problems clouding her mind, Josephine was a gold and blue blur through the snow on her way to the Chantry. She ignored the intense but sparse whisperings of praise and awe that rose like flames and made her hurrying, sore way to the familiar gates.

She couldn't get used to the way people looked at her now, but she'd made an active effort to try and appear like she wasn't shaken by the attention. It was hard enough to hear that some snorted in disbelief when they saw the Inquisitor, it was worse to think that she gave them every reason to scoff. So she took the advice she would have given any other diplomat in her place and used the intrigue surrounding her as a mantle. When they looked at her as if she could crush them and as if she had saved them all herself, by hand, each and every one, she made the effort to stand taller and look like the kind of woman about whom those things could be true. 

A figure was standing there at the front of the Chantry gates as she approached, very firmly planted in the cleared space right before the gates with his hands gripped behind his back. The strange person glared up at the Chantry with a look of determination.

 _He looks terrifying_ , Josephine thought, eyeing the rather gorey armor and _almost_ invisible armory of knives. _And I’m not dressed right. I will find another way in._

She moved away from main path easily, pulling the cape over her head to appear inconspicuous and unassuming (as if that could work, the light practically screamed off the gold)—but she was immediately stopped and turned around by a vice-like grip on her afflicted arm. She couldn’t stop the cry that escaped, her arm did hurt but the exclamation was more from the shock of how fast the stranger moved. The strange man dropped her arm immediately and leapt back, then forward again, and gasped:

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize, I’m so—“

Josephine turned and bit her tongue against a childish and accusatory “that _hurt,”_ mustering every ounce of dignity and grace she had in her secretly still nightdress-clad body.

 “Ah, I’m looking for the Herald of Andraste! Can you help me find her?” the person continued instead.

“It depends,” she said politely; smiling in a way that she knew was very warm and disarming, feeling it nowhere inside her. “I would be glad to bring her your message, if you would let me write it down.”

“Oh, I already wrote it down, I asked her squire to take my letter to her this morning. I still wish to speak to her, however, if at all possible,”

Josephine immediately realized that this must be a member of one of the parties she had opted to employ. She glanced at the man's biceps and immediately looked back up at his face, which was faintly pink and distinctly uncomfortable. He was definitely mercenary in the muscles department, but oddly well-behaved and shy everywhere else.

“Chargers? Valo-Kass?”

“Uh, The Chargers.”

Josephine carefully noted the very fine and barely noticeable repair jobs done on the man's armor.

“Ah, yes. I’ll be glad to meet with your… with whoever is in charge.”

“Oh, good—wait, _you_?”

She pulled the giant cloak tighter around her and hoped to whatever heard her that the nightdress underneath did not show. She said: “I’ll be overseeing this liaison, thank you for inquiring. We received your message and will come to see you ‘in action,’ as you said in your letter, as soon as we can spare the time.”

 “Ah-“

“Thank you! And now I must be off!”

In her anxious desire to be gone she turned to try and pull the gates open, something she suddenly remembered she could not physically do. Several guards fell over themselves to help, to her immense satisfaction. She immediately hid this smug relief with a carefully crafted “don’t trouble yourselves, I can manage” which the guards in turn dutifully ignored (very well-taught). She pointedly did not turn back around, now intensely unsure of how hidden her pure white and ruffled, lacey nightdress actually was. It was undignified, but at least this man did not discover that neither the great Herald nor the Inquisition’s chief diplomat could open gates.

 “It’s a pleasure to meet you, princess. I hope to see you soon.”

Josephine froze, valiantly hiding her intense horror. And though there had been no note of humor or sarcasm in his tone (he actually sounded a little reverent), Josephine resolved then and there _never_ to give up on getting dressed ever again. That sort of thing might work for Yvette, and it _might_ have worked back when artful dishevelment was a tool as handy as a compact mirror, but it certainly did not suit her now.

- 

“You were not naked at least”

“Thank you, dear Leliana, you always were the most insightful of us.”

“He wouldn’t have stuck around if you were naked, he'd have run for the hills.”

“We are currently stationed on a mountain, as it happens.”

“He would have run for Val Royeaux, then, and they'd be a damned sight better than you are now. Now put your fists back up, I haven’t finished beating you.”

“You know, darling, it looks very bad that you take so much joy in easy victories. People might begin to talk.”

“Haven’t you heard?” A new voice intruded upon the aimless back-and-forth banter. ”The herald is an exiled, haunted heiress with inhuman strength and eyes that set all they see alight with flames. Leliana is using these immense victories to advertise her talents.”

“You invited _Cassandra_ to watch this?”

“I did not! But you have to train with her as soon as we’re done here, she’s come to wait her turn.”

“And this time, Herald, you _will_ choose a sword.”

-

Josephine ran into one other mercenary that evening, in even more unfortunate circumstances than her nightgown had created. She was pouring sweat from Cassandra's merciless beating and panting from exertion.

“I represent the Valo Kass,” the enormous, horned woman said, effectively stopping Josephine in her tracks. 

Josephine spared her biceps a quick glance. Absolutely mercenary. This was beginning to have a terrible effect on her morale.

“Yes, we will be around to see you work, as you mentioned in the letter. Never Fear.”

“Oh. Good. But I had a speech.”

“Would you like to give me that speech?”

“I suppose you'd rather not waste your time, Miss.”

Josephine bit back a sigh at the rather lackluster title and gestured at the chantry gates.

“Please,” she said. “Ask for Uma, she’ll take down any details you need me to know. Do me a great favor and act as though you are in awe of her. Thank you.”

She left the giant woman like that, viciously glad that she had managed to impress one person at least. Until she lifted a hand to brush a stray strand of hair from her eyes and remembered again that she was drenched in sweat and that her hair was stuffed with hay from Leliana’s “bit of fun” and Cassandra’s ensuing “lesson.”

Josephine nearly stamped her foot right there in public.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Josephine continued to turn away (in a sense, she did it as politely as possible, without causing offense) every small gilded sword and dagger and bow and arrow the blacksmith tried to urge her into accepting, and she did it much less gently (still quite gently) when Cassandra dumped bundles of the damned things onto her writing desk. The word spread that the great Herald of Andraste was a gentlewoman and a delicate lady who would do no battle and command no armies, effectively confusing everyone who had passionately shared stories of dark eyes that set all they saw alight with flame and absolutely encouraging darker intents towards the Inquisition. 

Brave and stupid bandits were at the gates of Haven within two nights of her first rejected offer of public combat lessons, and though no one died (courtesy of the lion-like Cullen and his brave men), Josephine was struck with the same dim feeling of failure that she felt whenever she tried to remember what happened when she found the Divine. Of course, several bands of hired men at arms also turned up, offering their services to protect the fine lady, a discovery that Josephine also considered a failure. That’d be more money spent on keeping her alive for the sake of the Inquisition. Money that could go to other ends.

Her comings and goings became as tactical as the set-up of her camps, and combat training became a necessity she could not avoid. Her name also became even more public knowledge than it had been prior, her old associates and acquaintances dithered between allegiances to the Chantry and the prospect of a very delicious and powerful new _old_ ally.

No matter how she practiced, she could do little more than block coming attacks from men who felt too horrified at the very prospect of coming at her seriously. No matter whom she wrote to, she met walls of artifice and ivy. Every turn was a dead end and every day an exercise in maintaining what remained of her self-possession.

These failures on her part (as she described them to herself, late at night) did not mean she had any illusions that just because the Inquisition _should_ be primarily diplomatic that it would be. She had forced the Inquisition down this path, or fate had (either way, Josephine started it), and now she must translate it into being. She was not fighting a battle and intending to win, she was fighting with her own self at every turn. She had to weave the woman others thought she was with what the Inquisitor should have been, she was trying to reason with parts of her mind that didn’t know reason. She was trying, she realized, to subdue everything. To subdue herself into action, she realized without humor.

The attempt to reach Mother Giselle thoroughly cured her of lingering idealistic daydreams of perfectly executed peace treaties and completely willing representatives from all parties. For one, no one could be found who could represent even a fraction of the parties involved. The mages despised each other, despised their leaders, and the Templars had no respect for anyone connected to the Chantry anymore. Everything was falling apart.

But more importantly, the world reminded Josephine that it was cruel. She held a teenaged boy with his throat cut on the day they went in with blankets and carefully wrapped rams for the refugees. His body was hidden in a small ravine and discarded thoughtlessly.

No one else was present but Varric and Solas, and they politely didn’t mention her gulping sobs while they pulled her from his body and they hid her tearstained face from view while she righted herself and commanded the child buried. She had thought him sleeping and wanted to ask for directions to the man who could supply the Inquisition with horses, and Solas had realized what she intended to do too late. She later discovered that he thought she, like him, immediately recognized that the body was dead.

She kept even further out of ‘the field,’ as Leliana referred to the operations, after that. Mortified, pained, and somber, she remained bound to the camps and carefully delegated the tasks that needed doing from behind the ranks of several soldiers and scouts. She chose specific operations to appear on, and only at great cost to the Inquisition’s manpower elsewhere.

This could not work for long. Josephine decided that it stopped working when a party came back from a task bloody and beaten and reeking of that mineral and gas scent of the Fade.

Josephine, a true administrator, knew that it would not last, but she simply did not have the means to account for the impending failure. This itself was a failure on her part, she knew, though no one but she recognized it for what it was.

The rifts were spread throughout the wilderness while Josephine delegated from far away and her ravaged hand crackled and sparked in time with them even as she tried to steer parties away from them.

The Inquisition would have to take on another enemy, or at least the same enemy again, and Josephine only had an illusion of choice regarding _when_.

-

She sent out a party at dawn, carefully marking the rift on the map and planning her own ‘hiding spot.’

Officially, she called it a temporary camp, but in truth, she was hiding. It was outside Redcliffe, just barely. Too far from the rift to be immediately useful and within safe distance of the village in case of need. The mage Dorian was stationed within the camp, unofficially as her guard, to his immense delight. He found the whole situation delightful, obviously, and Josephine was only ever one twirl of his mustache away from upending the table onto his head.

She liked him very much.

In any case, the plan was perfect and the details were painstakingly reviewed and approved at every turn. There were pieces in motion in case of every imagined eventuality, and Josephine felt confident that she had solved their problem and accounted for her own failure in every way.

She sent five scouts (among them a mage dedicated to healing crafts) and found three standing when the signal was fired for her to begin her approach. The worst was that she was the only one whose mind ground to a halt the moment she counted the heads still fighting. Varric looked grim, but he kept his eyes on the rift and he signaled for her to begin without wasting a moment of time, unfazed.

Josephine unwrapped her glowing hand and began to close the rift. Her mind was a dark place as she peered into its abyss and watched it crumble into itself, and it remained that way even as she realized that both prone figures were slowly coming to, regaining consciousness and inhaling potions to stand up. One of them was Roan, a mage assigned to her at all times, a loud and bright man who was now keeled over and green under his dark skin.

She spoke not a word, and noticed in a detached, cold way that Varric also said nothing the entire way back to the camp, even when Dorian purposefully tried to joke about the way his arrows were now considered litter in the Fade, inciting more anger from the demons than was probably warranted over the pollution of property.

The mission was a success, and an extraordinary one at that. Josephine’s ability to manage the operation was clear to her even in a fugue of failure.

But she had failed.

-

What _had_ the Divine thought, seeing Josephine Montilyet, the silken diplomat, standing in the doorway, in an idiotic and frilly nightgown and a burning hand?

What had the thing thought? The thing; with its crackling and flat voice?

Josephine recalled, with a stab of familiar shame, that in the ruined conclave, in the vision…

The thing had _laughed._

-

Josephine put down her quill when she realized her notes were becoming a never-ending swirl of theories and observations. She pushed them aside lest she lose herself in the possibilities. That was a shortcoming she had as a student, her inability to leave the twists and conditions of ideas to turn away and solve problems.

Solutions came, unfortunately, the sooner you ignored the full extent of your problem. That was what one of her mentors in the Game told her once. 

Luckily she never completely took his advice, the man was always jealous she could carry a tune better than he ever could. He was mostly wrong, as most people were, but there was some truth to what he told her.

She underlined one conclusion her scribbling had arrived at. Perhaps she could employ two rather talkative mages to supply the insulated communities harboring potential rogue mages and Templars with what she liked to call “perspective.” Officially, of course, they would be guards. Supply deliveries needed close attention. Clashes between mages and Templars were becoming… horrific, to say the least.

Ma’er and Roan were loud and wildly different from each other. Ma’er was a silk and silver spoon Trevelyan circle mage and Roan was raised, in his own words, “by a witch and her traveling hedge. That is to say, the family mule."

They were extremely funny—in Josephine’s good opinion. She liked to listen to them, and she wanted Roan in a less combat-heavy position following his recovery. It’d be good to see the two unlikely friends leave the confines of the reclaimed Chantry and instead take turns arguing loudly and screeching insults in the fresh air.

That’d be one approach. She made a note for Uma and decided to leave the particulars to her discretion. She had a lot of faith in the frail elven girl who had become her right hand seemingly (to anyone else) overnight. The child had learned to take immense joy in being underestimated, a pastime that Josephine shamelessly encouraged, the same way she was encouraging it right now.

And vindictive joy was much more conducive for personal and professional growth than the bitter taste of resentment. She thought this and realized that she was mired in futile resentment. She ignored the grim realization to continue her work.

Lost in her thoughts this way, carefully setting aside the theories and ideas and terrors that would change the fate of the world, Josephine began to rifle through the papers she had marked for review on her desk. She lost time as she went onwards, and by the time even the blacksmith smothered his roaring blazes she came across the hopeless scrawl of the odd mercenary from two nights before, the beginning of the pile that she began two days ago. There was also the letter from the Chargers, signed by one Cremisius Aclassi.

She put her pen to the ink and made a note.

“ _Accompany Parties.”_

_-_

They went early in the morning the next day, flanked by scouts and a few of Cullen’s men. The Inquisition always required more manpower when Josephine came along on a mission, a necessity that she bore with shame inwards and took advantage of with carefully constructed pomp and poise outwards. This way, at least, the Inquisition  _always_ looked the part.

She was unofficially ordered to remain at the camp the moment it became clear that there was a full on international squabble on the shore. Leliana’s ever-present scouts flanked her as she carefully investigated every odd piece of foraged equipment and elven artifact they brought in from their initial reconnaissance missions in the area. When the loud laughter and general chaos came closer than it had been when she first heard it, she looked up from an odd brass spyglass and took in the sights.

Her first thought was an odd, shapeless, fond feeling. _Definitely mercenary_ , she thought, watching the same man from before heft what looked like a giant hammer across his shoulders. _Definitely a show-off,_ she also thought, noting that he was regaling those present with a tale of his victory, _that’ll suit the Inquisition perfectly._

Their leader was likewise a show-off. She never thought to associate the word “peacock” with a Qunari warrior the size of a bear, but he definitely strutted like one and he certainly acted like it.

“You look like you’re about to laugh at me,” his voice boomed out.

She had to crane her neck all the way back to send her usual reassuring, soft smile at the Iron Bull (who else could it be?).

“Never! I am merely pleased to meet you!”

“You’re like a poofy golden fruit, I could squish you.”

“Boss—“ Aclassi began warningly.

“Oh right, first impressions. Sorry. A pleasure, your Inquisitiveness. I don’t actually wanna squish you.“

“How interesting it is that mercenaries are always concerning themselves with how small or gold I am. Likewise, however.”

“You are small. It’s not what I expected. And I have to say; it’s not a good look for you. The great Inquisitor hangs back while her troops do the dirty work? You look weak to interested parties.” He said this and slammed his axe into the ground, resting his hands on it contemplatively. “But more than that, you _are_ weak.”

Josephine, reminded suddenly of Roan lying flat on the ground like a discarded, broken toy, ignored the way her men tensed and Cassandra gnashed her teeth in disgust and frustration. She saw the Iron Bull notice their offense and knew that though she was weak, the people who supported her and believed in her were not. It was heartening and horrible all at once.

“I was never one for battle, I have always detested violence,” she said, as disinterestedly as possible. “But it’s not _my_ strength we’re here to gauge. Nor is it my prowess in battle I’m here to pay for.”

The Iron Bull whistled, evidently taken aback.

Josephine gestured towards Varric lightly, and said, for her own benefit: “You may inquire as to my hidden talents with my trainer. He will reassure you of your safety as you travel with me. There’s no need to fear, Iron Bull,” she said, careful only to hint towards either mirth or insult. “Between my teacher and I, we will make sure you come to no harm in my employ.”

Cassandra started and pushed her way past both the (obviously, now) Tevinter mercenary and his boss to glare at Josephine. “W _hat is the meaning of this,_ ” she demanded, though it should sounded a lot more like a question. She seemed somehow still regal in spite of behaving exactly like a petulant child.

Josephine sighed, and the Iron Bull laughed very loudly. At least she hadn’t gotten herself killed insulting his honor so thoroughly.

Unless he believed her. In which case, she might as well be dead.

-

It was no secret that Josephine had no stomach for violence or battle. It was, however, an enormous secret that the Inquisitor’s soldiers frankly refused to spar with her for fear of harming her. Though, Josephine thought privately, she could spin that to her advantage, if anyone would _let_ her.

Josephine gave up her plans to remain the Inquisitor in name and a diplomat in power when it became clear that the rifts opening in the valley were a threat only she could combat, but it was easier said than done.

For this, even more than the evolving role of “the Inquisitor,” brought to light the biggest issue: combat. 

Varric’s ponderous silence after Josephine’s attempt to delegate her way into a rift victory gave her an idea. His interesting crossbow gave her another.

She went through the plans over and over, sending them between Varric and his secret engineer for a fortnight before finally sending the mysterious recipient five of her favorite rings and her most worn bracelet. The Josephine of two months ago would have hesitated, but now Josephine almost tore them off in a feverish excitement. _Take them,_ she thought. _Put them to use._ _They’ve done nothing but wordlessly remind people of things I hardly have anymore._

Cassandra’s lessons carried on as usual, Josephine ducked and parried and drilled and sweated and put her ridiculously cut open fists up when her sword was inevitably knocked out of her (humiliatingly small and blistered) hands. She learned to maneuver the shield (at the very _least)_ to Cassandra’s satisfaction, and even managed to get the woman to talk to her. Really talk. Cassandra gave her salves and recipes for creams to use on her sores and sat back and criticized her. It was… charming.

“Let’s be frank. You’re no princess, but you may as well be one. I know how this feels now, but soon you will be stronger.”

The biting, sometimes flat way she spoke no longer offended Josephine, who was used to the careful and elegant charm of those more studied than Cassandra was. Josephine learned to read that gruffness that meant Cassandra was reluctantly touched by Josephine’s kindness (a warm towel for a sore back, some tea, food from the meals that Cassandra and Josephine both missed while working) for what it was: gruff appreciation.

And though the training painstakingly made her stronger, it did not make her a fighter. It made her think like a fighter, however. She learned more about Cassandra’s habits in an observational way, internalizing nothing but using the bits and pieces to plan how to hold her shield and when to loosen her grip on her blade so that it could be knocked out of her hand without injury.

Cassandra, who was no fool, allowed this to go on for a while, until she began to insist that Josephine take those useless observations and use them.

Josephine, offended by Cassandra’s brusque and frank manner for the first time in a while, immediately took the opportunity to stop a blow with her shield and bring her leg up to kick Cassandra square in the chest, knocking her backwards into the snow.

Varric, who wasn’t actually spying but merely passing by, regaled the people of Haven with the tale for weeks.

That was how Cassandra and Josephine were. They were not friends, and the frankest thought Josephine that could have about the woman was that they would never be friends. But they managed to get along with each other.

Josephine knew that Cassandra thought her soft and idealistic, and she knew that no matter how hard she worked, Cassandra would always think of her as the ink-nosed, frail thing that Leliana protected ceaselessly. She thought of her condescendingly, and Josephine allowed her to. She couldn’t see how Cassandra could change. She thought maybe it could have been different, if Josephine had just been their Chief Diplomat, sticking to her job and doing it well. If Cassandra wasn’t tasked with teaching a connoisseur of the Game and now-diplomatic agent to fight, then she could have respected her as an equal apart from herself.

But Josephine was everything Cassandra ran from, she was taking up a mantle that Cassandra was meant for, and they both knew it.

Josephine, for the face of the Inquisition, ran Cassandra’s gauntlet. Cassandra, for the sake of the Inquisition, let herself waste time teaching Josephine to hold a sword heavier than both of her arms. And to swing it too.

-

The same woman from before met her outside the mines, where the sun was hot and the sand was blowing so hard it sometimes scratched her face. She didn’t think they were ready to truly take on the area; the Inquisition needed much more resources before she could allow that. However, it made a good rendezvous point.

The woman, who now introduced herself as Arla, insisted that they all hold their weapons in hand while approaching her Commander. Josephine did not understand this, but she hesitated to mention that to the woman currently hefting a giant axe and eyeing the Iron Bull’s two-handed hammer with a gleam in her eye. She motioned for Cremisius and Cassandra to follow Bull’s example and took the half-moon of polished horn and steel at her waist in hand. She snapped it forwards once, creating the shield she had designed with Dorian’s help, and looked at Arla expectantly.

“Yes?”

Arla looked down at the shield silently, then her eyes lifted barely enough to meet Josephine’s. 

The shield was a practical necessity, of course. But it was also strategic.

For who could deny the woman armed with a shield and accompanied only by giants?

“Yes.”

Josephine swore the woman’s entire stance changed, she seemed to soften and sharpen all at once. Josephine felt like she was in the presence of Leliana. It was extraordinary, and the way Josephine immediately recognized that Arla would protect her was a true testament to how at ease she was in Leliana’s deadly presence.

Commander Adaar, to his credit, barely looked at her shield. He eyed the others quite closely however, but the cave was so dark she could not make out his expression. She could see his eyes, however, gleaming from the light filtering in.

She pulled out the contract she had written up, and three pages of loose parchment, and then her favorite writingboard and lit the candle.

The Commander watched all this silently, and reached out without comment when she handed him the contract to look over once more.

They had corresponded for weeks, passing it back and forth. But she knew how these things went. The hardest, most crucial details would be hammered out here. She was rather used to these things taking place on her veranda at midnight, a cup of hot tea and mint calming her while a masked figure insisted that they _had_  verbally agreed on 300 gold, although her notes and his notes both said 200. 

She was both surprised and not surprised at all when the Commander handed her back the contract and told her he accepted the terms and the time of instatement.

Two weeks. Two weeks and she’d have both the Chargers and the Valo-Kass ready for active employ. It’d save them manpower, if not money.

“It is the same one we created together, it will do,” he said.

Josephine signed, and watched him do the same.

She supposed that the reference she was asked to provide all those months ago did her credit.

 


	4. Chapter 4

_It’s complicated_ , Josephine would say when pressed by her sister, who only wanted to hear that Josephine was happy. She told herself that she would never get along with the people placed so opposite her in the world and how it worked, so her happiness shouldn’t hinge on the things it used to. People… their happiness; it wasn’t the same here as it was before. It wasn’t even the same as it was in the Conclave. There was war then, yes, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t at every doorstep. 

 _They’re too different from me_ ; Josephine thought when people became suddenly polite and careful in her presence when they were laughing uproariously moments before she entered the tavern. _Dear Heavens,_ she thought when they apologized for the language they let slip in her hearing _, I’m not a child._

The man they called Blackwall adored her. She thought he would hate her at first, because the first scouts she sent in his direction were sent back with the message “ _come yourself, you nob._ ” Of course she had to gently ply the _exact_ wording out of the messengers because they were reluctant and damnably honorable. But when she did come herself, once again mortified by her clothes and the absence of a sword at her waist and rather damp from the rain, the man who towered over her while wringing his hands called her ‘my lady’ and apologized profusely. He was very obliging and kind. She had the sense to hide her extreme offense at this attitude and instead allowed him to fuss over her. But she did take offense.

She knew he was a principled man, at least in philosophy, and so she freely expressed her regret over her… condition. She made sure to pause delicately before saying the word ‘condition’ so that he began all over again with the apologies, which entertained her mildly until they reached camp once more. The man signed on within the hour and she found him conversing loudly with Cullen the following day, apparently in a rage that the Lady was not at least equipped with a horse. She mentioned to Leliana that it might be prudent to move the man very far away from Cullen, who was biting his tongue hard enough as it was against telling Blackwall exactly what he could do with his _chivalry._

She took great satisfaction (cruel satisfaction) in the way Blackwall lingered while Cassandra soundly beat her into the ground time and time again, leaving her with only a shield to protect herself. Absolutely horrified and simultaneously impressed, he stared at her sweat-soaked maneuver out of Cassandra’s beating with disbelief but despite that she knew he was someone she could count on to respect her as the Inquisitor and who would depend on her as his leader. At least now she could. It took some maneuvering, but he’d be a fine addition to their ranks.

Josephine found Sera by accident; for the serving girl who had tried to pickpocket her in Val Royeaux was so loyal to her mysterious Red Jenny that Josephine positively pined for the support of such an ally. Of course, she immediately realized what the friends of Red Jenny actually were, and she was so impressed by the ingenuity of the “operation” and its reach that she felt for the first time a deep yearning to improve the Inquisition by recruiting the entire network.

Sera immediately hated her, but Josephine could see that she was intensely impressed and indignant to have been caught out without her permission. Sera was also nigh incomprehensible, but Josephine treated the communication rift the same way she would with a foreign noble. She learned. Josephine showed Sera her notebook after she was comfortably moved in and let the girl have some fun making up obviously nonsense words for Josephine to write down crude and irreverent translations for. When Josephine responded by making up a word for Sera’s subtle taunting, Sera was moved up the ranks into the Josephine Fan Club (termed so by Leliana) alongside Blackwall.

One morning Josephine awoke to a rooster in Uma’s arms, with a message attached reading: _You’re not so bad._

The handwriting was atrocious and the sentiment was worse. She knew the rooster was only chosen because there were no peacocks on hand, because Josephine had slipped some days ago and made a sound of horror when Sera had jokingly compared her to one (and abbreviated the word peacock… interestingly). But Josephine was touched and she kept the message in her box of more precious letters.

More than that, she was surprised. Because she was wrong. These were the people she thought would and should never befriend her, who she felt inadequate around and who she thought must have felt out of place around her. And yet here she was, carefully accepting cookies from Sera (obviously stolen) and flowers from Blackwall (clearly reverent).

-

Just a few days before the Valo-Kass were scheduled to arrive, the Iron Bull cornered her after training. And “cornered” was the correct word.

“She’s teaching you all wrong,” he said very suddenly.

Josephine did not know how to answer because she suspected that she had always known that Cassandra was not teaching her at all, and so she said nothing.

“How serious are you about this?”

She couldn’t help but take offense to that, which he noticed and found hilarious. “Alright, I’m sorry. You can’t help it if you’re soft.”

She took offense to that too, but in an ashamed way, a way that couldn’t deny the truth of the statement.

“That’s not a bad thing,” he said. Josephine noticed this was the first time she had entered a conversation this vital without saying a single word. She noted that the Iron Bull was extremely skilled at reading her, like he had been watching for a while. “Like I said, you’re no warrior. You’re no killer either. You just want to survive.”

Something in those words struck out at the well of shame in her mind that was always ready to overflow and overwhelm her, the memory of a stone-still face she knew under a mask she didn’t.

“Ah, there’s a story.”

There was.

“It was an accident.”

“It was probably stupid and embarrassing, right? Kind of traumatic, but stupid.”

And he was right. His callous manner did not make him less right. There was the pain and the shame, and then there was mortification. A horror that she had done something so base and wasteful, somehow that just made the shame more shameful. That she was ashamed for this reason, that she was as ashamed by a murder as she was by its inelegance, its lack of necessity, its wastefulness. A body at the bottom of the stairs? _Useless._ She was horrified at herself, disgusted and terrified by turns, and always regretful. Always mortified.

Josephine Montilyet, with her silk and her gold and her sparkling smile and her not-quite beauty, and at her core was a spring of shame, always ready and flowing.

It was how she wound up between the Chargers that evening, ashamed of herself again, telling these people that she hated to kill and thought it pointless. These people who lived her spare minutes of horror every day, by necessity, by choice, because death was a tool as dependable as a sword.

They didn’t hate her, though. They asked about the Conclave, and what she saw and how she saw it. And she noticed the Iron Bull give Cremisius (who demanded to be called Krem, and not Cremisius and definitely not Aclassi, but Josephine was too polite to give in yet) a meaningful glance and nearly burst out laughing, hysterically furious at how far she’d let her control go.

She wanted to stand up, put on her other face, any other face, and tell them that this was quite enough, she had work to do, and that she’d be glad to see them well-rested tomorrow morning.

Josephine did not do that. She let them continue handing around drinks and she let them sigh each time she refused one. She let them carry on questioning her, their respect and awe carefully placed aside.

But in truth it was not their respect but their silent reverence that they discarded. They threw it aside, they listened to her and responded without condescension, but not as they would have when she delegated tasks or created plans.

“The feeling, the sensation of it, can you ever get used to that?”

Cremisius told her very frankly that he did, and she would if she let herself, but that it wasn't something to strive for.

“The thought of it?”

They all paused.

“Yes, even the thought of it.”

They ended the night like that, more seriously than the Chargers had ended any night of drinking in a while, or so Cremisius told her as he walked her back to her cabin.

“The world is a lot of different ways for a lot of different people, but there’s room for you in it. You made it this far, after all,” he told her.

She contemplated that and tried to put it all together but her mind was on other things and other places. She always fancied herself very smart, but she could see now that there was a whole world where she didn’t matter, and where her thoughts didn’t matter. Before this, nothing mattered, even when she thought it did. Now everything she said and thought mattered, _really_ mattered. She was a leader now. She had to act like one. And think like one.

She thought of the Iron Bull, tall enough to watch all of his Chargers dig in before bothering to pull his plate closer to himself, using his height to watch them even in the safety of the tavern.

Josephine fell asleep pondering that.

 


End file.
